How would the largest financial institutions fare during various future economic conditions? The Federal Reserve Board has released three scenarios the 19 big banks should use in preparing for their annual stress tests required by Dodd-Frank.

The three scenarios, baseline, adverse, and severely adverse, include "more than two dozen variables such as unemployment, exchange rates, prices, and interest rates," writes American Banker's Donna Boraks.

Next month the Fed will provide global market shock components – one-time, hypothetical events - that 11 of those institutions will have to test against in the worse economic case scenarios.

The increasing adoption of virtual card payments by accounts payable departments has created an unex­pected complication for suppliers: more friction in the processing, posting and reconciliation of payments and receivables. The root of the problem is that most suppliers rely on a manual approach to processing e-mailed virtual card payments. Suppliers are forced to balance their organization’s need for operational efficiency and control with rising customer demand to pay with a virtual card. But a new breed of tech­nology enables suppliers to process virtual card payments straight-through, addressing the needs of buyers and suppliers. This paper details the growth of electronic business-to-business (B2B) payments, shows how manual approaches to processing virtual card payments cause friction in accounts receivables, describes a way to process virtual card payments straight-through, and highlights the benefits of friction­less payments.